On Jadaliyya, an anonymous eyewitness account of the violent dispersal of a protest outside the Syrian Embassy in Beirut on Tuesday night:

The Lebanese security detail disappeared, and the now larger group of counter-protestors began to push towards us, clearly trying to intimidate us into leaving. They would push into us, a couple of them would shout at the rest to step back–“protecting us” they later claimed–and then the charade would start up again. Finally, the supporters of the Syrian regime (a mixture, that night on Makdissi street, of Ba‘thists, SSNP members, and others) realized that the anti-regime protestors were still holding their ground and not responding to their threats of violence. So they attacked…

Three people went to the police station on Bliss Street (Maghfar Hubaysh) to file a complaint against those that had physically harmed us. They were turned away by the police, who told them that the attackers had political backing and that there was nothing the police could do.

Comments

What can we do? All I can think of is to send a link to some friends, but it seems sometimes as if we are observers at some kind of savage ritual or watching a movie in which the inevitable happens and I paid money to get in. I can think of no way that I can actively help when I read these articles.